UTSA’s debut in football brings back memories of another era

I have always enjoyed history. I enjoy it particularly in the moments when an event of significance unfolds before my own eyes.

A few come to mind.

The day the Spurs won their first NBA title. In 1999 in New York, mayor Rudy Giuliani and other bigwigs walked down a corridor past the Spurs’ locker room in Madison Square Garden.

Outside in the hallway, as the mayor of New York, Donald Trump and others walked past, stone-faced, Avery Johnson’s voice boomed from from behind a closed door. The Spurs’ victory celebration had just begun.

A few years earlier, I witnessed 82,000 people standing and cheering a high jumper. Yes, a high jumper. Little-known Charles Austin, from San Marcos, had just won the gold medal at the 1996 Olympic Games.

Only a few days earlier, the city of Atlanta was in shock after an explosion had ripped through Centennial Olympic Park, leaving one fan dead. Austin’s victory was one of the first, if not the first, for the United States after the tragedy.

A welcome bit of good news to soothe frayed nerves.

In 1993, I attended a downtown news conference when a teenaged baseball phenomenon named Alex Rodriguez showed up for the U.S. Olympic Festival.

Though Rodriguez was knocked out of the tournament at St. Mary’s University, the victim of a foul ball that struck him in the face at V.J. Keefe Stadium, he recovered to do all right for himself in major league baseball. Controversial? no question.

But he went on to make pretty big news as a professional.

In ’93, he was just a kid, still unsigned by the Seattle Mariners, going out to play some ball with other amateurs.

Events like that make my job enjoyable, immensely.

That’s why I will be torn a little bit this weekend. I’m assigned to travel to Lubbock to cover Dennis Franchione’s return to college football. Franchione’s Texas State Bobcats will meet the Texas Tech Red Raiders in Lubbock Saturday night.

Back in San Antonio, the Alamodome will rock when the UTSA Roadrunners hit the field for their first football game. A historic moment, no doubt, for a program that started playing Division I sports in the fall of 1981.

I was at UTSA’s first basketball game that season, when the Roadrunners made their debut at HemisFair Arena. Edison graduate Rudy Davalos, the school’s first athletic director, started the UTSA program.

Using basketball as the headline attraction, university officials wanted to bring attention to the new campus off Interstate 10 and Loop 1604.

UTSA’s first basketball team was not good. If memory serves, they won only seven games, and they lost badly in the opener to the Arkansas Razorbacks, coached at the time by an up-and-coming coach named Eddie Sutton.

That, in its own way, was a historic step for sports in San Antonio.

I was fortunate enough to cover UTSA sports off and on for the next 30 years. Several years ago, I wrote in a column that the idea of football at the university, no matter how far-fetched, at least deserved a good discussion.

And now, with the dawn of the football era, I welcome the team’s arrival and applaud Lynn Hickey and those who made it happen.

Heck, I even applaud the 1981-82 UTSA basketball team.

Those guys played hard, if not well.

In coming years I think the impending rivalry between UTSA and Texas State in football will emerge as one of the best things to happen to sports in this area in years.

As a matter of fact, I think the kids at Texas State are probably ready to play UTSA in football on Sunday, in a parking lot in New Braunfels, if that’s the only site available.

So, here’s to the fans in San Antonio. Enjoy the pre-game festivities. Enjoy the game at the dome. Most of all, enjoy what it means for the changing sports landscape in the city.